Introduction

 Ford Electric Cars are manufactured by the Ford Motor Company, one of the oldest automobile companies still in existence today.  The company was named after its founder Henry Ford and it came into being in 1903 in Dearborn, Michigan.  In addition to manufacturing vehicles under the Ford brand, they are also responsible for manufacturing vehicles under the brands of Lincoln and Mercury. 

 Although the company was hit hard by the financial crisis of 2008 in the United States just like it counterpart companies GM and Chrysler, the incident did force them towards electrification and because of that many plans of theirs have either been recreated or accelerated in that area.  They now believe that within a decade most of the cars that they sell could either be hybrid vehicles or else those that are fully electric.

 Ford Hybrid Vehicles

 At the moment, Ford has six hybrid vehicles that are either already on the market or on the waiting list to get into the market.

 Ford’s push for hybrid technology started in 2004 with the introduction of a hybrid version of the popular Ford Escape automobile.  This car was noted for being representative of just the third company to move to the hybrid market with a roadworthy vehicle and of course it was the first Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV) to carry the hybrid banner onto the marketplace.  The Ford Escape is arguably the most unique hybrid vehicle that Ford has created because even though it uses technology that was primarily taken from patent sharing agreements with Toyota, it has a lot of the power of a typical SUV while at the same time maintaining fuel efficiency standards that are really off the chart for that type of vehicle.

 The Mercury Mariner was the next vehicle that Ford brought into its hybrid collection, having been released in 2006.  The Mercury Mariner was interesting because it was a fully capable hybrid vehicle that was brought to market a year earlier than was originally intended.  This was not necessarily because of problems with the car, but rather because of the efficiency of the work on the project that allowed it to go on ahead of schedule.  For anyone that looks at the Big Three American Automakers as being nothing but overpaid low efficiency workers, the Mercury Mariner is certainly proof that there is a lot of hard work going on within those facilities.

 Following the Mercury Mariner in 2006, Ford released four more hybrid vehicles.  In the 2009 market they released the Ford Fusion and the Mercury Milan in hybrid formats once again using the same technology that had been made popular with the Ford Escape.  Then, one year later at the start of the 2010 market, the Ford Edge and Lincoln MKX both saw their hybrid counterparts come to bear on the marketplace.

 Up until now, Ford has remained conventional with the charge-maintenance hybrid vehicles.  These are vehicles with the hybrid electric-gasoline engine that primarily maintain their charge through regenerative braking.  The technology for hybrids that can be plugged in also exists and while it is not official as of the time of writing, Ford is expected to use the 2012 market release to put forth a hybrid of that time as a competitor to the relatively new Volt model being released by General Motors.  Aside from that though, their plans on the hybrid front appear to involve continuing with the development and submission of electric-gasoline engines.

 Ford Electric Vehicles

 It is possible to move to the fully electric realm with Ford, although to be fair that is not really their focus in the electrification market at the moment.  Instead, the focus of Ford in this market was originally the Think City, perhaps one of the most interesting electric cars to be released.  At one point, it was one of just two electric cars to have been certified for travel on the highway due to successful crash tests.  Even now, there are only two other cars in the world that can claim to have that.

 On the outside, the Think City for the most part looked like any other elongated hatchback automobile.  However, the legislation in the United States made Ford think that the project was a bust for making sales within the country and while they were eventually convinced not to destroy all of the vehicles, they did sell the project off in 2003 and move all of the vehicles to Norway where they were immensely popular due to favourable treatment by the legislation in that country.

 Under the column of discontinued electric projects previously flying the Ford banner would also have to be the Ford Ranger electric vehicle.  This was a pickup truck that Bill Ford himself actually did use for a long time.  It was even used by members of the US Postal Service for a long time too.  Overall though, the truck never did quite catch the interest of these markets and while Ford did not destroy all of the vehicles (holding off at the last moment like they did with the Think City automobiles), they did discontinue production and started to look at other potential electric vehicles.

 One such example is the next one likely to be on the market and it is the all-electric commercial van.  It is as of yet unnamed, but the idea is that it will follow in the footsteps of the Ford Ranger and be able to deliver cargo on that electric engine.  If Ford does a good job with this vehicle it could definitely be a huge victory for them as electric cargo vans could become very popular as fuel prices get even higher.

 Finally, there is the Ford Focus which will be released in 2011 under a version that will run under a battery rather than a gasoline engine.  Supposedly, it will be able to generate many of the same performance statistics as the normal Ford Focus and it will even be able to go 100 miles on a single charge.  As with most electric vehicles however, this is something you probably need to wait for in order to see if the practical results match up to the theory.